the end..or so we thought

by: Kem Gascon

I am totally amazed at all the wonders the internet has to offer. After watching Virtual Revolution, a documentary from BBC, i was encouraged (ok, so we we're told) to try visiting some of the websites mentioned there that we haven't encountered before. Most of the sites were familiar but never in my entire cyber-life have I visited those for the reason that I was clueless on what they were about.

Some, like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Google, I know a lot about because I use these sites. I have accounts in all of them anyway. But there were also some which sounded familiar but I never visited such as WikiLeaks. There was also a website I never encountered before (it made me feel quite internet illiterate) which is PayPal.

I visited both WikiLeaks and PayPal because these were the ones which caught my interest (and somehow my memory). It's really amazing that the internet has given everyone everywhere the ability to pay from one place to another however far from each other point A and point B may be. That was almost an impossible thing to do without getting your feet off the ground ages ago. But now, it all rests in your fingertips. One click, you're paid! If we were in the ages when witchcraft was against the laws, this feat would have beenconsidered one...probably someone who uses PayPal would be accused of witchcraft. Crazy, yes, but it's really something "magical" and we can't deny it.

WikiLeaks is another splendid website. It provides many (confidential?) information and promotes press freedom! It is very useful if we want to know a lot of things that the government does not want to show. Transparency of the information of public interest, I believe, is significant to a nation.

The internet has opened a lot of avenues for us, whether we are a big company or a simple citizen, to be able to access and disseminate information. We can never really tell how to stop the internet from growing even more powerful and influential. I believe we still couldn't predict the end of this technology. We never know, tomorrow might have a new surprise for us in the cyberworld.